interesting Bloomberg video about your privacy in DNA tests, they sell your data and never delete it and or can be given to police.
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There was previous reports about this. Beside the privacy issue, they ran some test with the same sample to each service. They all came back with wildly different results. Seems everyone was 30% Irish.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of cross contamination. $99 including shipping doesn’t buy you the best lab conditions. (Not to mention the sampling method.)
Related: Ancestry DNA’s page asks, “Nigerian? Sicilian? What are you?” which is kinda creepy. I’m human, guys…unless I’m NOT. Oh my god, I could be some kind of Irish werewolf! Send me one of those saliva tubes right now!
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“Fun” fact: this is how they caught the Golden State Killer.
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I did the 23 and me several years ago now, didn’t realize they could give my info to the cops.
Anyone you do business with can, and will, give any information they have about you to the police.
Russell Ward
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Unless they are Apple. Lol
I work in the health insurance industry (disclaimer: but these are my own opinions). Federal law prohibits your insurance carrier from using a genetic test to make eligibility decisions. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/dtcgenetictesting/dtcinsurancerisk
The thing is, the data lasts forever. That law could be changed the next time the political wind changes direction. I won’t be doing 23andMe anytime soon.
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So how can one take a DNA test that does not share your info? I am assuming that only Doctor’s offices would be compelled to be hush hush if you are an Irish werewolf?
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Do you want to find out your ancestry? If so then you need to understand your DNA will only tell you about your ancestry if it is compared to a large data base of other peoples DNA. Most of those data bases expect you to reciprocate by adding your DNA, and some personal information, to their data base.
Most people don’t think much about what they are giving up when they share that information. Others think that the people that get their information surely wouldn’t use it to harm them. There maybe laws that don’t allow some of your information to be used in certain circumstances but those laws can be changed by the stroke of a pen.
It is a very daunting task to determine what is best for you if you think that your DNA information would be a great help to you. I hope that if your interest is more than casual that you can make a satisfactory choice.
Russell Ward
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I was actually wanting to find out more medical information. Got some wacky health issues that may be clarified by gene testing.
Maybe we could get the science committee to make a “23 and me” test. Then we could just all promise to be cool with our info!
Do you have to provide more information than a mailing address or an e-mail address to get the result?
You can get a throwaway e-mail address or get friendly with the mailroom at work and have it delivered to an assumed name.
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dna analysis uses an AI / neural net that does comparative matching. the more data that we collect the more accurate the AI is.there’s really no way around it. full transparency keeps everyone on the high ground. Nixon was right~~~
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I work for a health insurance company. I won’t be doing any consumer DNA tests.
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Strange that HIPAA does not apply here.
Because you sign your rights away when you do the agreements and testing.
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I tend to be one of those “tin-foil-hat” kinda guys and I really value my privacy, but I still find it hard to imagine a scenario where my DNA would be used against me, other than being denied for some kind of health insurance.
That being said I found it more beneficial to know what might be in my DNA, and I hope that my one lil data point could help “Science with a capital S”.
Your situation might be different, but my dad was adopted so there’s a lot of curiosity on my part.
I ended up using a free service that was based on some Facebook thing that claimed to be using the data for research in treating diseases and junk. It was called “Genes for Good”
The downside to going this route was that they do not offer any analysis of your genetic code.
This meant that I had to interpret my own data using promethease and some other site/tool that I can’t remember.
It’s a TON of information, and you need to do some research about terminology to properly interpret the data, but I found it fun and fulfilling.
The test told me:
- I’m probably diabetic (yep)
- I’m more sensitive to caffeine than the average person (yep)
- I’m prone to alcoholism (yep)
- Metabolism slower than average (yep)
- Probably Eastern European Ashkenazi Jew ( friends tell me I look Jewish
) - Rare mutation that makes me more resistant to HIV ( they said I should consider donating bone marrow )
)
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think not only of yourself but also your guilty family members…
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Once any one of your family does the DNA, you’re basically in the system. The Golden State Killer was caught because a distant family member did an genealogy DNA test and several cold cases of major crimes have been solved using consumer DNA databases. For those that are concerned that the police will be given this information… why are you worried? Been committing murders in your spare time? The more crimes solved, especially those cold cases, the better.
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